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| New Visual Glasses – Better Objectives |
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Otto Schott and Ernst Abbe were the first to further improve the imaging quality of optical systems with their newly developed optical lenses.
In 1888 Ernst Abbe commissioned Paul Rudolph, then working as calculator of optics, to compute lenses of higher performance using new types of glass from Schott. It was by fortunate chance that he had the idea of using the spherochromatically corrected type of telescope specified by Gauss in 1840 as a component for camera lenses.
In 1890 the first Anastigmat lens came onto the market. This first idea on the creation of a Protar® lens was followed by innumerable modifications which were produced by many optical companies.
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| The Anastigmat designed by P. Rudolph is distinguished by the simultaneous correction of astigmatism, field curvature and chromatic aberration. | The first Planar® lens – a double Gaussian lens. |
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To meet the demands both of professional users and of the growing number of amateur photographers, work in Jena was concentrated on the development of Carl Zeiss Camera and Cine Lenses.
All efforts were focused on one goal: very good field flattening, high speed and excellent image definition. In relatively fast succession came the Planar® (1896), Unar (1899) and Tessar® (1902) lenses. Further milestones included the extremely fast Sonnar® lens (1932) and the development of the antireflection coating for lens surfaces (Carl Zeiss T* coating®) in 1935.
For many years now, Carl Zeiss has been developing lenses for the world's most famous cameras including Hasselblad, Rollei, Alpa and Contax® as well as for Arriflex movie cameras. Since 1998 Carl Zeiss lenses have also been incorporated in Sony digital cameras.
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